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Gigabyte GTX780: Fan running @100% at idle.

12-13-2013, 10:16 AM

Hello all,

I've just built a new Xeon based development workstation (Params below).
The machine has a single Gigabyte GTX N780OC GD3 card.
My problem is simple, once X starts, the fan goes into full swing no matter what type of load is being generated.
E.g. I'm getting the same noise level when displaying my normal KDE desktop (GPUCoreTemp at ~27c) and when running a Ungine benchmark (GPUCoreTemp at 55-57c).
At all times, GPUCurrentFanSpeed is stuck at 17 (read-only... coolbits?) and GPUCurrentFanSpeedRPM is stuck at 0.

Any ideas what I can do.
I'll be shame if my wife will throw out my new brand new workstation out of the window :/

I should add that:
1. The performance is right on the mark (~10% from Phoronix' Titan review).
2. The GPUCurrentClockFreqs seem to be running between 954Mhz (idle) and 1110Mhz (Unigine Valley). I would imagine this is quite high for idle?
3. On the other hand, power draw seems to be OK during idle (~200w) and at 100w more when running Unigine Valley (~300w).
4. FWIW this is a copy of the this [1] thread.

I've just built a new Xeon based development workstation (Params below).
The machine has a single Gigabyte GTX N780OC GD3 card.
My problem is simple, once X starts, the fan goes into full swing no matter what type of load is being generated.
E.g. I'm getting the same noise level when displaying my normal KDE desktop (GPUCoreTemp at ~27c) and when running a Ungine benchmark (GPUCoreTemp at 55-57c).
At all times, GPUCurrentFanSpeed is stuck at 17 (read-only... coolbits?) and GPUCurrentFanSpeedRPM is stuck at 0.

Any ideas what I can do.
I'll be shame if my wife will throw out my new brand new workstation out of the window :/

I should add that:
1. The performance is right on the mark (~10% from Phoronix' Titan review).
2. The GPUCurrentClockFreqs seem to be running between 954Mhz (idle) and 1110Mhz (Unigine Valley). I would imagine this is quite high for idle?
3. On the other hand, power draw seems to be OK during idle (~200w) and at 100w more when running Unigine Valley (~300w).
4. FWIW this is a copy of the this [1] thread.

Guess the first question that I have to ask is have you tried it in Windows and does it work properly there? The reason I ask is that if the fan rpm reads zero then it is possible you have a bad fan on the cooler that is not reading right (or plug/sensor/etc). If it works in windows then that eliminates bad hardware.

Comment

I'll write the complete answer so people facing the same issue might stumble upon this solution.
Here goes:
In order to find which BIOS to flash, I first went looking for the current GPU BIOS version at:
$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/gpus/0/information | grep BIOS
Video BIOS: ??.??.??.??
In short, the nVidia driver, beyond not being able to detect the fan speed, was also unable to detect the BIOS version - in short, something is very wrong the machine's POST sequence.
Went into the Intel MB settings (BIOS) and hiding under Advanced -> PCI Configuration was Legacy VGA Socket which was considered to initialize the wrong slot (1 instead of 2).
Setting it to Slot 2 + complete power off + PSU disconnect (a simple reboot didn't help) and I've got a silent machine.

Most likely this issue will prevent me from installing a second GPU, but to be honest, at least for now, I couldn't care less